


It's Our Town, Everybody Scream

by APgeeksout



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M, Trick or Treat Exchange Extra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 18:05:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2516903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tell me something about Before."</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Our Town, Everybody Scream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galfridian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/gifts).



“Tell me something about Before.” Before the Purge. Before Natives and Loyalists. Before observation ceased to be enough for Them. Before her own memories begin.

Simon smiled at her, fond but sad, too. His _how can you still be so young?_ face. She reached out to lace their fingers together on top of the sheets.

“Well, there was no curfew, for starters.” The siren had sounded minutes before; earlier than usual. Her Fringe Division documents would have permitted her to cross the city, but she made no move to leave, and Simon gave no indication that she should go.

“You could take a girl out,” he continued, his rough thumb stroking over the back of her knuckles, “until late, late at night. Early in the morning, even. No checkpoints, no transit papers, no ration cards. You could stop and get coffee whenever you felt like it.”

“When it was a liquid?” she asked, familiar with this lament, settling into the comfortable rhythm of their old joke.

“A delicious liquid,” he agreed. “It came in different flavors. This time of year, when it just starts cooling off, they used to sell it in Pumpkin Pie Spice.  D'you remember ever having pumpkin pie?”

She shook her head.  She remembered a few things - green grass, the scratch of a bearded goodnight kiss from her father, the flash of a coin disappearing in her mother's clever hands - but no pie.  

“Pity. It was sweet. Creamy. Rich.”

“What else did people do, this time of year?”

She didn't ask _What would my parents have done?  What else don't I remember?  What would we be doing if everything were different?_

Didn't need to ask any of those, because he shifted, pulling her in closer to his side, and answered everything anyway. When she drifted to a rare sound sleep, it was to the lullaby of Simon's talking about costumes and candies and festivals and parties and a world so secure that people scared themselves and each other for the fun of it.


End file.
